Here’s something that crossed my mind several months ago and, as often happens, fell out of my head shortly afterward. I chalk it up to my desperate efforts not to end up homeless a second time, the utter failure of everything I tried, and my subsequent focus on simply surviving while living out of my car. But it popped back into my mind the other day and I need to do something with it before I get derailed again.
As usual, the idea formed gradually, in bits and pieces, some of those pieces sloshing around in my head for years before they finally clicked together. The main driving force behind it was probably my experiences in different jobs and things I’ve observed over the years. For instance, when I worked in the one-hour-photo department in a huge store (whose name kinda-sorta rhymes with “Paul Blart”) and caught some of the overflow from Electronics, which was right next to Photo … let’s just say that the failures of the American educational system came into sharp focus. Repeatedly.
Seriously. I could write an entire set of books on the things I had to face every day when I worked in retail. I’d title the series, Encyclopedia Stupidica.
I’d also add that, in recent years, I’ve watched with increasing horror the kinds of culture-war bullshit so many in our nation’s leadership pour all their time and energy into, doing everything they can think of to hurt already-marginalized people rather than passing legislation that might actually improve their lives … but that would turn into a whole other rant so I’ll save that for some other time.
Anyhoo. All this stuff made me wonder how the alien civilizations in my novels, Game Over and Uncharted Territory and sequels currently in the planning stages, would go about educating their citizens. The idea I’ve been going with in these books is that humans are the new kids on the block and all the other spacefaring nations have existed for thousands of years longer than we’ve been around. Some didn’t have the same “growing pains” humanity has had and others did, but went through them and got past them a very long time ago. With a few exceptions here and there, the civilizations in the known galaxy are able to get along with each other with little to no trouble, and humans are the ones who end up causing all the problems because we still haven’t gotten our collective shit together yet.
This is another of those things I should use for the stuff I’m planning to put on World Anvil, but everyday life has been getting in the way for the better part of a decade. Maybe if I’m ever able to get a roof over my head someday, I’ll be able to actually sit down and spend as many days as needed to work on it, rather than whenever I can get to the library for an hour or two. Or when I can drag my mind away from a project that’s difficult to keep working on yet I keep going back to it because I feel like the story is trying to tear its way out of me …
Anyway. For this, I decided to use the oldest known civilization in the setting, the mulathi. My sort of mental shorthand for them is that they’re built kinda like the Draenei from World of Warcraft but their hands have two fingers and a thumb like the Trolls or Tauren. Which is how my brain often works. I see something like these and instantly think, “Hey, that’d make a cool alien!” and then I tweak some of the details. Like, some time after I came up with the idea, I decided that their faces shouldn’t look too human because they’re, y’know, aliens. So what came to mind is that their faces are shaped a bit like the Gelflings in The Dark Crystal. Eventually, I’ll probably refine the idea until they look quite different from all of those, but for now, it’s kind of a quick-and-dirty way to describe them.
So. Because the mulathi have been a starfaring civilization for around thirty thousand years, their technology is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else’s. They’ve also been quite rigid and militaristic for the past few centuries, though they’re showing signs of drifting away from that mentality and lightening up a little. For instance, one of their heavy cruisers is more than a match for Earth’s most advanced dreadnoughts, but they rarely feel the need to throw their weight around.
Another example of their tech is their advanced cybernetics and their ability to download information whenever they need it. Which led me to work out how their educational system functions. Basically, they use databases of information that is updated so it’s always constant and vetted rigorously to be sure it’s accurate, and mulathi children simply download the files they need to learn languages, spelling, or any other subject. More advanced courses get into more complex subjects, of course. But most of their school system is built around teaching students how to use that information properly — teaching them how to think rather than what to think or having them simply memorize numbers and facts. Mulathi schools are all about thinking critically, and it starts at a young age.
Another thing the mulathi do is require everyone to prove that they can comport themselves as adults. They have to be able to pass a battery of tests to demonstrate their maturity, and if they fail, their adult status is legally revoked and they’re considered children again until they’re able to act mature and responsible. It’s been rare in the past few thousand years, but it has happened on occasion.
Testing starts at age ten. After passing a battery of tests and simulations in which the child proves themselves capable of acting maturely and handling more responsibility, they graduate to the next stage, and the next. Before a mulathi child can go out on their own, they have to prove that they can pay rent, not trash the place they’re living in, get along with their neighbors, and so on. There’s no specific age set for this stage. It starts when the child chooses it, though it generally doesn’t happen until they’re in their early or mid teens. When a mulathi feels they’re ready for it, they sign up for the program and move into a house or an apartment to live on their own, though the schools keep safety nets in place just in case.
School officials are always nearby, for instance, standing by in case of emergencies or injuries. Every citizen gets a monthly stipend — their version of Universal Basic Income — and pay for any work they do is above and beyond that. If the kid squanders the money and can’t pay the rent, they don’t pass the test and remain children until they learn not to piss their money away, at which point they can try again and demonstrate that they’re capable of not screwing up again. But if one of them were to scream and yell at a retail employee over nothing or start spewing Q-Anon style conspiracy theories or insisting that space isn’t real and no one has ever ventured to other planets, then that person would be treated as a child even if they were twenty or fifty or ninety years old. Which could be considered the mulathi version of “fuck around and find out.”
Those who prove themselves capable of being adults are allowed to continue as such, and are allowed to take on more responsibility and more important jobs. If they reach a point where they can’t handle the extra responsibility, they’re sent back to their previous positions until they learn what they need to know for more advanced jobs. And if they screw up too many times, back to school they go. Those who can prove themselves are retested every few years to be sure they haven’t grown complacent or otherwise forgotten any of what they’ve learned. They have to continue proving themselves throughout their whole lives.
When all this stuff came to mind, I couldn’t help thinking how much better off the world would be if we didn’t have so many man-children in charge of everything … but then, the mulathi have had tens of thousands of years to figure out a better system and iron out all the wrinkles. And they’re also, y’know, fictional.
Well, I guess I’ll wrap this up and try not to think about how doomed we probably are. Maybe there’s a chance that we’ll get through this and mature as a civilization … in twenty or thirty thousand years …
Yeah. Let’s stay positive. 
Fred T. Kerns, Sci-fi Writer 